SAY IT WITH A SMILEY

Emojis, stickers, whatever you call them, the colorful little pictograms that fill our phones' and tablets' keyboards are now an intrinsic part of the way we communicate in the modern world, Xu Haoyu reports.

In 2015, the word of the year selected by the Oxford Dictionaries is not a word by the strictest definition - but a yellow face emoji.

Oxford Dictionaries defines a "word" as a "single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing" or "conceptual unit of language", which allowed the "smiley face" to be inducted and also affirmed its unique ability for communication and expression.